


Visits

by ripple_strip



Category: Motorcycling RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-30
Updated: 2014-10-30
Packaged: 2018-02-23 05:27:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2535842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ripple_strip/pseuds/ripple_strip
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is set in 2013. Please let me know what you think. Thank you for reading.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Visits

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in 2013. Please let me know what you think. Thank you for reading.

“Say something.” I look over at Marc, sitting in the driver’s seat of his car. I look at my hands, my sparkling red nails glinting in the sunlight. “Montse, come on. Just say something.”

 

\---

 

"I don't know what to say Marc. I mean i'm proud of you and your success, but this means you're leaving Cervera " The unspoken ‘leaving me’ lingers in the air and I continue looking at my hands. I pick at my nail polish as I continue to avoid eye contact. Marc doesn’t say anything. I roll the window up and down, up and down, the slow whirr becoming methodical. He reaches over, stops my hand. I look back at him.

 

\--

 

“You can visit.” He tells me. It’s not good enough but I don’t say anything. We go home.

 

\--

 

We stand at the airport together, his family has already said goodbye, but security let me go through to the gate with him because I’m good at acting distressed and devastated. But it’s not really acting at all because the way I’m feeling is real. I look up at Marc as he plays with something on his phone. The screen is a picture of a Honda dirt bike outside his new home in Switzerland. It used to be of us.

 

\--

 

His flight number is called. I think about our hands, which are sitting so near each other I can feel the heat from his palms but their not touching. Now they don’t have the chance.

 

\--

 

“You’ll visit?” He asks again, the seventh time in the span of walking away from his family to now. I want to say yes, I want to beg him to let me come with him, I want him to tell me he loves me and that he’ll never be without me.

\--

 

I shrug noncommittally. “It will be great in Geneva.” I say instead. He nods, smiling slightly, and walks towards his flight.

 

—-

 

I date other guys. He calls occasionally.  Sometimes he’s happy, enjoying the freedom and privacy he deserves. Sometimes he wants to know everything about home and misses Alex and Tito desperately. I put on a positive voice and tell him about home. What I really want to say is, ‘I’m having a hard time filling the void you left.’ But I don’t because it’s not fair for him.  He was never my boyfriend, only my best friend, and it’s not fair to wait until now to do it.

 

 “I want you to visit me, Montse. Please. I need to see you and I need my best friend.” His voice is low, the receiver crackling slightly.  
 “Okay.” I say, and the next day he’s emailing me a ticket and a flight plan. When I step into Geneva, he’s waiting for me with a big grin on his face and one of his bear hugs I’ve always enjoyed.  
 

—-

   
We sleep together, in Geneva, both drunk off the city and the lights and the expensive wine he can now afford with his fancy motogp salary. It’s my first time and he’s gentle and perfect and everything I thought it would be.  
 

Except it’s not because the next morning there’s a lot of fumbling around, there’s awkward glances.  He tries to explain that he’s sorry, that he didn’t mean it, and I burst into tears. I don’t cry, not in front of him at least, but now he sees it and he feels even worse. I lock myself in the bathroom, crying still more and more tears every passing moment like a small child, and when I come out he’s gone. There’s a note on the table; he went to training with Dani.  
 

I leave too, but I don’t leave a note because it’s too hard. How do you explain in a note years of emotions and love? Words can’t describe it so I don’t bother.  
 

—-  
 

He calls again, two months later after the race in Qatar. I don’t pick up. I can’t pick up. I can’t do this whatever it is with him anymore. So I go out that night, I drink cheap wine with a cheap date and he kisses me at the end of the night.  
 

I don’t feel anything when his lips touch mine. I don’t feel anything when he pushes me against the door and places his hand under my shirt. I leave him on the doorstep because it’s not right; that much I know, and stand under the spray of the shower. But that doesn’t make things right either. 

 

—-  
 

“Do you ever wonder what happened? When things will be okay again?” He writes in a letter. It came in the mail. I laughed when I first got it because his handwriting had never been a work of art. But then I wanted to cry because was this what we’d been reduced down to? Writing letters to each other when we were only a phone call away? “I just want things to be okay again.”  
 

The letter ends. I stare at it for a moment. I pull a piece of paper from my notebooks scattered on my desk. There’s a cap less ink pen too, so I grab it. I can’t think of any other words to write but “me too” and that feels insubstantial.  I want to write poetry, sonnets and declarations of love like the classics did. But all I have is a lame ‘me too.’  
 

I send it anyway, because after half a year of no contact I feel I owe him that. And it doesn’t feel so insubstantial when he writes back “I’m coming home.”  
 

—-  
 

 

It's Christmas Eve and we find ourselves sitting in the same Honda, now Alex's. Marc doesn’t say anything, and I study him out of the corner of my eye. He looks older, more mature, like living alone has somehow made him into a new person. But I still recognise him. The quirk of his smile is still the same, the way his eyes fix me with disbelief when I do something out of nowhere. His hands still look the same – long blistered fingers and warm palms.  
 

 

I start clicking the lock button; it’s too cold to roll the window down. It isn’t long before he reaches over and stops my hand. This time he doesn’t let go. This time when we sleep together he doesn’t apologise, he doesn’t tell me it was a mistake. He holds me in his arms when I fall asleep and he tells me he missed me and he doesn’t want to let me go again.  
 

 

“You’ll visit?” He asks me, his voice tickling my ear before I fall asleep completely.  
 

 

“I’ll visit.” I tell him, finally sure about everything.

 

This time when we’re sitting in the airport, we’re holding hands.


End file.
